I join more than one-half of our nation who will refuse to accept Trump as my president. He did not receive my vote, and will lose the popular election by two million votes. Unable to offer Trump even an iota of respect for both his personal and professional actions, I cannot give him my loyalty.
It was easy to support President Obama. He is a patriot, a man of his word, worked hard for the American people, had s superior intellect, and respected everyone, even his enemies. His wife and daughters gave us pride as well, and our nation was proud of its “first family.”
The same cannot be said for Trump or his family. If I could get past the fact that Trump is a white supremacist, a xenophobe, a sexist, and a sexual predator, (which I cannot), he and his family are entirely out of touch with the great majority of the American people. The “Von-Trump” family is the most privileged and the whitest family in America. None of them has ever truly worked an entire day in their lives. None of the has ever been forced to worry about their daily existence, or for the future of their family. They were raised in a far different America than I experienced, and I cannot identify with anything about them.
The chasm between the Von-Trumps and the rest of America can never be closed. Most Americans struggle daily, and most Americans have principles and values learned mostly from relatives and older friends.
This is what President Obama told Sasha and Malia after everyone heard the depressing news about Trump’s win.
“What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told the New Yorker. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding.”
Words to live by. President Obama does not resort to anger and hatred; he is the opposite of Trump.
The President added: “And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. … You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, ‘OK, where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.'”
This is “presidential,” and once again the exact opposite of a Trump rally where vile rhetoric is the norm, and hatred fills the air.
Throughout life I have witnessed and experienced many firsts. Most of them were positive, but a Trump presidency has forced me to disavow all of my nation’s leaders for the first time. The entire Von-Trump family is an embarrassment for our nation.
Op-Ed
By James Turnage
Photo Courtesy of Michael Vadon
Follow me on twitter; @jamesturnagenov
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